





































 

VOL. 11, NO. 3 
SPRING 2023 

 

Artist Activism as Arts Entrepreneurship 
Artists Disrupting Social Structures and Changing the Future 

Megan Jordan 

The Ohio State University 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: The conceptual framing of artist activists as arts entrepreneurs is pivotal to this 
study’s analysis of artists’ political organizing during the overlapping moments of the Covid-19 
pandemic and the Trump presidential era. However, artist activism as a form of arts 
entrepreneurship is underexplored in the arts entrepreneurship literature. To address this gap, 
I conduct a side-by-side comparison of key principles in the arts entrepreneurship and social 
movement literatures to establish a transdisciplinary theoretical baseline that supports my 
argument that artist activism is a vital form of arts entrepreneurship. I then analyze interviews 
with twenty-seven artist activists who cultivated and exercised actions for “changing the future” 
(Koppl & Minniti, 2008a, 17) during this period and apply my findings to further expand the 
taxonomy of arts entrepreneurship first developed by Chang and Wyszomirski (2015) beyond 
management process to vehicle for institutional change. In addition to connecting arts 
entrepreneurship to the social movement literature and conceptualizing artist activism as a 
form of arts entrepreneurship, I identify strategies and tactics employed by US artist activists in 
their creation of both economic and social value in the 2020-2022 period. KEYWORDS: artist 
activism, arts entrepreneurship, activist art, portfolio careers, social movements. 
DOI: doi.org/10.34053/artivate.11.3.194 

Introduction 

In the U.S., the contentious period of 2020-2022 was a pivotal moment for artist-led 

responses to traumatic events and their subsequent questioning of and challenge to 

established social structures and normative belief systems. From Black liberation to 

immigration reform to reproductive rights to climate change and other social issues, 

progressive social justice artists acted to fight systems of oppression in a variety of ways 

across multiple institutions. This study, grounded in a U.S. context and focused solely on 



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2 

artists fighting to change the future (Koppl and Minniti, 2008a), analyzes interviews with 

twenty-seven artist activists who economically, logistically, and emotionally managed 

their careers during this period to serve public good through the disruption of social 

structures. It makes an empirical case for the conceptualization of artist activists as arts 

entrepreneurs by expanding the arts entrepreneurship field’s understanding of the role 

of dissent (Callander & Cummings, 2021) at the intersection of art and non-market 

entrepreneurship (Shockley, Frank and Stough 2008; Koppl & Minniti, 2008b), thus 

extending arts entrepreneurship beyond “management process” (Chang & Wyszomirski, 

2015, 25) to means for structural transformation (McMullen, Brownell and Adams, 2021). 

Further, it explores strategies and tactics employed by artist activists during this period 

to build understanding of how they sustained themselves and their work to contribute to 

public good. 

Background and Motivation 

Artists’ interpretations of their own lived experience provide researchers key 

biographical evidence for the analysis of social troubles across history. Thus, this study 

seeks to establish a link between artist activism and arts entrepreneurship grounded in a 

Millsian understanding of the interplay of biography and history: “No social study that 

does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections 

within a society has completed its intellectual journey” (2000, 6). In support of this 

approach and in keeping with the methods of intimate insider research (Morrison, 2021; 

Taylor, 2011), I start first with my own story as an artist activist and entrepreneur. 

The founders of the Center for Artistic Activism, Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, 

define artist activism as a “hybrid practice that marries the creative force of art to the 

concrete results of activism” (2021, 5). Similarly, in The Art of Protest, T.V. Reed defines 

activist art as “art that has been created inside or very close to social protest movements” 

(Reed, 2019, xi). Over the past six years, my artistic practice has largely served social 

movements and social justice causes. Previously a labor and environmental organizer, I 

began painting as a political outlet following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I went on 

to graduate school to study sociology, specifically the role of artists in producing positive 

social change. My graduate studies provided me with the freedom, flexibility, and skills to 

study artists’ roles in social movements, and it also provided me the economic security to 

continue my work as a social movement artist. I knew from my production and 

consumption of art that artists working in a range of mediums participated in social 

movements and served a vital role within them. Seeking avenues of support for my 

research and art practice beyond the limited academic setting, I sought out training 

opportunities, mentorship, community partnerships, and funding that would provide me 

with the knowledge and resources to continue and strengthen my artist activism. I worked 

as an arts, culture, and equitable development intern; a graphic designer; a muralist; and 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

3 

a producer for various social movement organizations, non-profits, and for-profits serving 

social justice missions. I applied my doctoral training to skill-build, network, and pay my 

bills and health insurance. In fall of 2020, after an emotionally heavy summer of police 

killings of unarmed Black people backdropped by a deadly, unpredictable, global 

pandemic, I was asked to be one of the artists to lead the painting of a 350 foot-long Black 

Lives Matter street mural in the downtown area of my city. Around this same time, with 

funding from an art policy institution, I founded an artist activist collective to create art to 

aid a participatory people’s budget effort. 

My artist activism journey has been a balancing act of responding to context, 

managing risks, innovating new ways of doing, protecting my morals and ethics, working 

in harmonious and contentious collaborations, and acting strategically to push my own 

social justice agendas in a variety of venues while sustaining my economic survival and 

mental health. Interested in how other artist activists do their work and persist at it, I 

looked to engage in rigorous social scientific and theoretical work to answer this question. 

In the process, I found that artist activism is a vital form of arts entrepreneurship. 

The Present Study 

In this study, I analyze interviews with 27 artist activists to make the case that their 

activism should also be understood as a vital form of arts entrepreneurship. I begin by 

defining and operationalizing arts entrepreneurship and artist activism. I then expand the 

taxonomy of arts entrepreneurship (Chang and Wyszomirski, 2015) to draw throughlines 

from the arts entrepreneurship literature to key concepts in the social movement 

literature. As relatively little research has been conducted on artist activism in either of 

these two literatures, I address the gap by highlighting connections between art, 

entrepreneurship, and activism across both fields. I apply these connections in my 

analysis of the artist activist interviews I conducted to discern how artist activists, as arts 

entrepreneurs, manage their careers to both sustain themselves and contribute to public 

good. I conclude with thoughts on future research opportunities for bridging social 

movement research with arts entrepreneurship research. 

Definitions of Arts Entrepreneurship and Artist Activism 

In their pivotal work attempting to bring consensus to the definition of ‘arts 

entrepreneurship’, Chang and Wyszomirski (2015: 24) define it as “a management process 

through which cultural workers seek to support their creativity and autonomy, advance 

their capacity for adaptability, and create artistic as well as economic and social value.” 

Following this work, Essig (2015) defines the process of arts entrepreneurship as “not a 

managerial one, but a creative one” (241-242) in which arts entrepreneurs create 

mediating structures, recognize as well as create opportunities, network to gain contacts, 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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mobilize resources, and seek professional development as a means to the end of 

connecting their work to an audience (Essig 2015; 2022). A few studies examine the 

disruptive nature of arts entrepreneurs challenging status quos. For instance, White’s 

(2019) concept of “organizational attack” highlights arts entrepreneurs’ coordinated 

attacks on social structures and normative aesthetic beliefs. Similarly, newer definitions 

and treatments of arts entrepreneurship highlight innovation as grounded in disruption, 

or a “disturbance of behavior” (Essig, 2022: 78). Others have extended this vein of thought 

with categories of arts entrepreneurship like “meaning-making,” highlighting its symbolic 

value, and “re-making,” bringing to the fore its power to reform existing institutions and 

organizations (Callander & Cummings, 2021: 746). 

So then, who are arts entrepreneurs? Just as ‘artists’ are not defined by a particular 

job, credential, or location (Novak-Leonard & Skaggs, 2017; Menger, 1999), neither are 

arts entrepreneurs. Who counts as an arts entrepreneur is a matter of one’s artistic and 

entrepreneurial practices within as well as beyond one’s occupation. As a process of 

innovation (Shumpeter 1947), entrepreneurship in the arts is pursued in an amalgam of 

ways via various artistic practices and organizational forms to then be shared to an 

intended audience (Scherdin & Zander, 2011). This is important feature to acknowledge 

given the precarity and fluctuation artists experience within their careers. In a growingly 

economically precarious time (Americans for Tax Fairness, 2021; Childers, 2022; Gould, 

2022; Click & Stockburger, 2022), artists who are not privileged with full-time 

employment in one creative job and who seek to sustain their creative careers via the self-

management of a portfolio of jobs in the arts (Wyszomirski & Chang, 2017; Woronkowicz 

and Noonan, 2019) might be considered entrepreneurial. Portfolio careers can be 

described as gigging, freelancing, moonlighting, public grants acquisition, and so forth 

(Strandvad, 2022; Wyszomirski & Chang, 2017; Feder & Woronkowicz, 2022; Banks, 2007; 

Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2010). An artist might develop a portfolio career for economic 

reasons, greater independence, time flexibility, or a lack of choices (Feder & 

Woronkowicz, 2022; Munnelly, 2022), but there are other drivers of this form of 

entrepreneurial action. While arts entrepreneurship as a form of entrepreneurship not 

directly tied to capital accumulation or wealth creation (Scherdin & Zander, 2011) can be 

motivated by a sense of self-fulfillment when exercising an organizational mission 

(Preece, 2011: 108), a key driver is the act of changemaking: a “universal form of human 

action” in which entrepreneurs’ actions are oriented towards “changing the future” (Koppl 

& Minniti, 2008a: 17). Koppl and Minniti (2008a) composed this treatment of 

entrepreneurship from Kirzner’s (1982) concept of ‘impactful actions’.  

In their extensive review of entrepreneurship journals and art journals, Callander and 

Cummings (2021: 748-749) found that both literatures illustrate artists as functioning on 

the periphery out of necessity but also as a strategy to resist power structures and status 

quos. Even further, their research highlights the need for an intentional focus on 

disruption and dissent in the arts entrepreneurship field. Research on artist activism 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

5 

could fill the gap Callander and Cummings (2021) point to by explicitly analyzing artists 

challenging social structures for the purpose of social good. Artist activism is defined as 

artistic practice married directly to results-driven activism (Duncombe & Lambert, 2021: 

5; Duncombe 2023). Similarly, activist art is art created within or alongside social 

movements (Reed, 2019, xi). Artist activists are individuals who take on the role of 

creating art for a social movement for either internal- or external-facing usage. Various 

studies in the social movement literature attempt to examine artists as activists (Roscigno 

& Danaher, 2001; Cornfield, 2015; Isaac, 2009, 2012, 2014; Redmond, 2013). There are 

three general lines of thought in the small but growing artist activism literature: studies 

that examine the content or aesthetics that artists produce (Isaac, 2009, 2012, 2014); 

studies that analyze artists as activists strictly within their occupational communities 

(Cornfield, 2015); and studies that examine distribution and audience impact (Roscigno & 

Danaher, 2001; Danaher, 2010; Danaher & Roscigno, 2004). No studies I have found 

analyze all three types of artist activism. Nevertheless, how and where artist activists 

operate and the extent of their impact are interrelated concerns. 

While relatively little research has been executed on artist activism in either the social 

movement or the arts entrepreneurship literatures, comparing these literatures, as I do 

below, illuminates connections between activism and entrepreneurship in the arts. This 

comparison also enables both fields to build understandings of how artists creatively 

manage their careers economically, logistically, and emotionally to contribute, beyond the 

creation of economic value, to the creation of social value and to public good. Further, it 

has the potential to expand our understanding of artists’ roles in public and civic life 

(Novak-Leonard & Skaggs, 2017) and of collective action in arts and cultural work (Skaggs 

& Aparicio, 2023), as well as the policy implications these expanded understandings carry 

(Cornfield, Skaggs, Barna, Jordan, Robinson, 2018; Redaelli, 2019). 

As mentioned above, generally missing from the arts entrepreneurship literature is a 

framework for interpreting arts entrepreneurship as artist activism. While the social 

movement literature underexamines the interconnectedness of how and where artist 

activists operate and the extent of their impact—a nexus that the arts entrepreneurship 

literature and its attention to ‘means and ends’ (Essig, 2015) might help to elucidate—this 

study directs its focus to the social movement literature for the purpose of assisting the 

arts entrepreneurship literature in expanding its understanding of arts entrepreneurs’ 

‘means and ends’ to include efforts to ‘change the future’ (Koppl & Minniti, 2008a), i.e., 

artists’ challenge to the social structures and institutions they inhabit. This focus does not 

preclude a consideration of the ways that artist activists intricately balance their social 

justice goals with entrepreneurial methods that also serve their own economic survival. 

Rather, it sets the stage for my findings below: that artist activists are arts entrepreneurs 

who strategically balance portfolio careers to create both economic and social value as 

they contribute to public good. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

6 

Expanding the Arts Entrepreneurship Taxonomy 

Chang and Wyszomirski (2015) provide clear conceptual categories for defining arts 

entrepreneurship action: strategies, tactics, competencies/skills, mindset, and context. In 

this section, in Table 1, I first detail components of this taxonomy alongside 

complementary key concepts from the social movement literature to draw throughlines 

between analyses of arts entrepreneurs and social movement actors. Directly following 

Table 1, I explicitly explain the components, concepts, and throughlines. 

Table 1. Comparison of arts entrepreneurship components and social movement key concepts. 

Components1 Arts Entrepreneurship Literature Social Movement Literature (Key 

Concepts) 

Strategies Definition: strategies are the ‘ends’ of 

value creation and innovative vision 

Definition: “overall plan for action, the 

blueprint of activities with regard to 

the mobilization of resources and the 

series of collective actions that 

movements designate as necessary for 

bringing about desired social changes” 

(Jenkins, 1981:135). 

E.g., Creation of micro enterprises, 

promotion of policy change via policy 

entrepreneurship 

E.g., Emergence of new social 

movement groups (Blee, 2012; Coley, 

2018).      

Self-management of career 

transitions/career portfolios, Change 

Management, Intrapreneurship 

Activist Biographical Pathways (Isaac, 

Coley, Cornfield, & Dickerson, 2020, 

2016; Coley, 2018) 

Community or heritage enterprise, 

new cultural products or services 

Cultural Production (Peterson & 

Anand, 2004; Roscigno & Danaher, 

2001; Danaher, 2010; Danaher & 

Roscigno, 2004; Isaac, 2009) 

Tactics Definition: means of “implementing 

the strategic vision” (Chang et al, 2015, 

26) 

Definition: “the specific means of 

implementing strategy, the forms of 

collective action taken by movement 

actors” (Meyer & Staggenborg, 

2012:11-12) 

Use of digital technology to 

market/promote, reach new audiences 

in new ways 

Collective Identity Formation (Polletta 

& Jasper, 2001) and Digital Organizing 

(Carty, 2018) 

Networking, managing partnerships Coalitions (Mayer, 2011; Van Dyke & 

McCammon, 2010) 

Crowdsourcing to fundraise Resource Mobilization (McCarthy & 

Zald, 1977; McAdam 1982 [1999]) and 

Mutual Aid (Spade, 2020) 

Competencies/

Skills 

Definition: an entrepreneurial leader’s 

ability to “carry out the vision and to 

The social movement literature does 

not have a succinct term or definition 

 
1 Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

7 

use implementation tactics” (2015, 26) for activists’ competencies and skills. 

Instead, social movement scholars 

examine training programs and formal 

and informal career-biographical 

pathways where activists 

professionally develop competencies 

and skills. 

Opportunity Spotting, Business Skills 

Acquisition, Professional development 

via education or training 

Movement Schools & Preparation 

Pathways (Isaac, Coley, Cornfield, 

Dickerson 2016, 2020) 

Mindset Definition: Individual character 

qualities or ways of thinking believed 

to be associated with entrepreneurial 

behavior (2015, 26) 

Social movement scholarship has a 

variety of concepts that encompass 

activist’s mindsets, including but not 

limited to high-risk activism, activist 

commitment, emotion work, and 

utopian ideals/movements. 

Risk-taking High-Risk Activism (Goodwin 1997; 

Goodwin & Pfaff 2001; McAdam 1986) 

Perseverance, tolerance for failure  

 

Activist Commitment (Passy & Giugni 

2000; Carlsen, Ralund, & Toubol 2020; 

Nepstad 2004); Emotion work of 

managing failure (Nepstad 2004; 

Barker 2001; Goodwin & Pfaff 2001) 

Open-mindedness Imagination & Creativity (Kelley 2002; 

Davidson 2022); Real Utopias (Wright 

2010) 

Context Definition: “external environment and 

conditions that the entrepreneur 

contends with” (2015, 26) 

For social movement scholars, context 

is better known as opportunity 

structure (as introduced by Eisinger, 

1973), defined as the context and 

circumstances that affect the shape, 

size, success, and failure of social 

movements (Wahlstrom and Peterson, 

2006: 364; McCammon, Campbell, 

Granberg, & Mowery, 2001) 

Organization, Individual Artist or 

Small Business, 

Opportunity Structure (Eisinger 1973; 

Meyer & Staggenborg 1996; 

McCammon et al 2001) 

 

 

Artistic Field, Local/Regional Locale Venue, where claims are pressed 

(Meyer & Staggenborg 2012) 

 

Strategies. Strategy is an iterative process of balancing resources, context, 

opportunities, relationships, timing, targets, and dilemmas and is composed of collective 

action demands, arenas, and tactics (Meyer & Staggenborg, 2012: 7). Chang and 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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Wyszomirski (2015) define arts entrepreneurship strategies as the ends of “value 

creation” and “innovative vision” (26). Arts entrepreneurship strategies include the 

creation of microenterprises and the self-management of career transitions. If we take the 

authors’ conceptualization of arts entrepreneur strategies and apply this to artists whose 

practices are social justice oriented—artist activists—the sociological social movement 

literature’s definition of strategies is quite similar. For social movement scholars, strategy 

is the “blueprint of activities” actors use to perform their actions to bring about their 

“desired social changes” (Jenkins, 1981:135). Even further, actors must inventory their 

resources in reference to their overall goals and available opportunities to “maximize 

their influence” (Meyer & Staggenborg, 2012: 6). This acknowledgement of the importance 

of context and available opportunities is very much in line with Koppl and Minniti’s 

(2008a: 11) general theory of entrepreneurial behavior, specifically entrepreneurs’ 

“opportunity recognition” and “innovation.” Both arts entrepreneurship and social 

movement definitions of strategy define it as a variety of activities and uses of resources 

individuals use to implement their desired social change. The creation of microenterprises 

can be viewed as also the creation of social movement organizations (see Blee (2012) for 

more on social movement organizations). Likewise, the creation of new products or 

services occurs in social movements as well—for social movements are sites of cultural 

production (Peterson & Anand, 2004; Roscigno & Danaher, 2001; Danaher, 2010; Danaher 

& Roscigno, 2004; Isaac, 2009). Just as arts entrepreneurs self-manage their career 

transitions, artist activists self-manage their social movement involvement across venues 

in their career portfolios. Just as arts entrepreneurs manage change to create social value, 

so do artist activists. 

Tactics. The second component of Chang and Wyszomirski’s taxonomy is “tactics,” 

defined as the means of “implementing the strategic vision” (26). Similarly, the social 

movement literature defines tactics as “the specific means of implementing strategy, the 

forms of collective action taken by movement actors” (Meyer & Staggenborg, 2012:11-12). 

The tactics activists select deeply depend upon the venue where they are seeking to create 

change. Tactics are the intentional efforts to create change (Taylor & Van Dyke, 2004) and 

can be directed at targets in contestations as well as directed towards the development of 

a collective identity within a social group or audience (Taylor & Van Dyke, 2004). Similar 

to arts entrepreneurs, social movement actors also utilize fundraising and crowdsourcing, 

run online communication channels, manage coalitions, and tactically employ their social 

networks to gain resources and support for their causes. Mutual aid is a perfect example 

of social movement crowdsourcing tactics. Mutual aid is crowdsourcing of a collective in 

order to meet each other’s survival needs (e.g., food, clean water, housing, health 

products) and is grounded in an understanding that the structural systems we have in 

place will not meet our needs (Spade, 2020:7-9). Arguably, mutual aid—a key tactic of 

social movements—relies on networking and managing partnerships, a tactic of arts 

entrepreneurship. All in all, tactics are integral components of arts entrepreneurial and 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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social movement action. 

Competencies/Skills & Mindset. The components “competencies/skills” and “mindset” 

work together to produce outcomes. The personal traits linked to mindset—”risk-taking,” 

“perseverance,” “tolerance for failure,” and “open-mindedness”—support the personal 

capacities associated with arts entrepreneurial competencies and skills, specifically 

“opportunity spotting,” “business skills acquisition,” and “professional development via 

education or training” (Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015, 25). Together, competencies/skills 

and mindset support arts entrepreneurs’ ability to carry out tactics (Chang & 

Wyszomirski, 2015). In social movements, activists gain their competencies from 

movement schools (Isaac, Coley, Cornfield, & Dickerson, 2016), mentorship, and other 

organizer professional development training programs. Risk-taking maps onto the skill of 

emotional management required for “high-risk activism” (McAdam, 1986; Goodwin, 1997; 

Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001)—activism that has high costs of participation attached to it, like 

those of life and freedom. Perseverance can be understood as emotional work rather than 

a personality trait. Social movement actors actively manage their emotions to justify their 

commitment and overcome failure (Passy & Giugni, 2000; Carlsen, Ralund, & Toubol, 2020; 

Nepstad, 2004). Likewise, open-mindedness is required for utopian movements—

movements that lean into imagining new societies and new ways of life. Imagination and 

creativity, associated with arts entrepreneurship (Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015, 25-26), are 

also essential features of social movements (Kelley, 2002; Wright, 2010). Activists must 

imagine the change and solutions they seek.  

Context. Sensitivity to context, or environment, is the fifth component of the arts 

entrepreneurship taxonomy. Arts entrepreneurs are constantly responding to external 

factors in their environment; Koppl and Minniti (2008a: 15) call this “improvisation.” 

Environment could be their cultural industry, their community, or a geographic/spatial 

location (2015: 26-27). Similarly, activism responds to context. The social movement field 

often employs the terms ‘venue’ and ‘opportunity structure’ to describe the environment 

activists are tasked with responding to. A ‘venue’ is where activists “press their claims” 

(Meyer & Staggenborg, 2012: 9-10). Venues have different “targets and audiences” and 

“come with distinct rules that affect the way activists can pursue their goals” (Meyer & 

Staggenborg, 2012: 9-10). Similarly, opportunity structures, specifically political 

opportunity structures (as introduced by Eisinger, 1973), are the context and 

circumstances that affect the shape, size, success, and failure of social movements 

(Wahlstrom and Peterson, 2006: 364; McCammon, Campbell, Granberg, & Mowery, 2001). 

Thus, both arts entrepreneurs and artist activists respond to environmental factors to 

successfully achieve their social visions. Context is the umbrella under which all 

entrepreneurial action occurs. Arguably, through a social movement lens, we can view 

opportunity spotting (Chang et al., 2015) or opportunity recognition (Koppl & Minniti, 

2008a: 11) as artist activists’ ability to maneuver and take advantage of open and closed 

opportunity structures (Eisinger, 1973)—i.e., receptive environments or repressive 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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environments. Opportunity spotting can essentially be understood as actors’ responses to 

a given ‘context’ or opportunity structure. Their environments or venues could be their 

workplace, their local government, or even federal level government policy. Even further, 

one’s ‘mindset’ is also shaped by the context to which one is responding. Activists perform 

emotional work to manage failure (Nepstad, 2004), justify risk (Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001; 

Goodwin, 1997; McAdam, 1986), and maintain commitment (Nepstad, 2004; Passy & 

Giugni, 2000), i.e., perseverance in their work.  

The throughlines I draw here between conceptualizations of arts entrepreneurship 

(Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015) and key themes and characteristics of activism derived from 

the social movement literature make the case that artist activism should be framed as a 

form of arts entrepreneurship with the goal of changing the future (Koppl & Minniti, 

2008b) and contributing to public good. Against this backdrop, I next examine closely how 

artist activists, as arts entrepreneurs, manage their careers to sustain their creation of 

social value. 

Research Methods 

This study examines 27 interviews with artist activists conducted between March 2020 

and March 2022 to discover how artist activists, as arts entrepreneurs, do their work and 

persist at it. In this section, I address my own positionality and the study’s context, sample, 

and analytic strategy. 

Intimate Insider Research. I have worked as a volunteer, and at times a paid employee, 

for more than thirteen movement groups. My work spanned various roles like researcher, 

artist, community organizer, graphic designer, union steward, etc. These experiences 

fueled and guided my interviews. The content of my observations as a movement worker 

will not be shared as part of my findings, but my experiences in the field were vital to my 

understanding of artist activist work disclosed in the interviews and for building trust and 

rapport with my respondents. Due to my extensive experience in various social movement 

fields, some might term this research “intimate insider research” (Morrison, 2021; Taylor, 

2011) because of my personal connections and experiences to the work and some of the 

individuals I studied. Though my personal experience is extensive, I do not claim to 

possess or represent the insider opinion. I rely on my sample of 27 diverse artist activists 

from various movement fields to glean their insider experiences as artist activists enacting 

and embodying arts entrepreneurship in their activism. 

Context. As detailed in the previous section, activism responds to context, as does 

entrepreneurship. In their work, artists, as activists and entrepreneurs, are constantly 

responding to the opportunity structure presented to them. The context and period of this 

study (2020-2022) was a particularly trying time in the United States. Unemployment 

rates were up. Covid-19 was rampant; vaccines were not yet accessible or widespread for 

half of the data collection period. The final year of the Trump presidency created much 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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unease, disgust, and distrust of the government (James, 2021). The murders of unarmed 

Black people, specifically Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, were the tipping point for 

civil unrest, awaking many to the long-voiced war cries of the Black liberation movement. 

Economic inequality widened considerably, and billionaires’ wealth reached new heights 

while poverty also soared (Americans for Tax Fairness, 2020). Mass waves of worker 

strikes and walkouts occurred (Payday Report, 2020). Mental health and burnout crises 

boiled over (Mayo Clinic, 2021; Threlkeld, 2021); some attribute this to the Great 

Resignation (Society of Human Resource Management, 2022). Activists of the 2020-2022 

period were operating under conditions of mass fear, normlessness, uncertainty, stress, 

and unease. 

Sample. Artist activists, artists who create “inside or very close to social protest 

movements” (Reed, 2019), are the population of focus in this study. U.S.-based artist 

activists from an amalgam of social movements and causes were selected through 

snowball sampling (Creswell, 2009) and from responses to flyer and social media 

advertisement of the study. Trusted comrades and social movement organizations (SMOs) 

reposted the flyer, casting a wider net beyond my immediate network. Due to my 

intersectional approach (Crenshaw 1990; Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013) to social 

movement research, I sought to recruit a diverse sample across race, ethnicity, sexuality, 

gender expression, age, citizenship status, nativity, ability, and geography.   

The sample for this study is a subset from a larger project from which this work is 

drawn. For the larger project, I sampled beyond artist activists to include non-artist 

activists who work in and beyond the arts. For this article, my selection criteria included 

only self-identified artists and cultural workers who presently also self-identify as activists 

or as being involved in social justice-oriented work. Interview questions like ‘do you 

identify as an activist?’, ‘what social causes do you work in?’, or ‘what kind of work do you 

do?’ served the sampling strategy for this study. 

The sample population consists of 27 artist activists from a broad range of 

occupations, demographic characteristics, and geographies. Within the sample, 10 

respondents were visual artists, 4 respondents were performance artists, 8 identify as 

cultural workers, 3 were technology/communications designers, and 2 were literary 

artists. Participants held various professions such as teacher, organizer, muralist, 

sculptor, writer, waiter, theater practitioner, CEO, poet, nanny, student, urban planner, 

curator, comedian, puppeteer, and diversity and equity consultant. Reflecting broader 

trends in artistic careers (e.g., Throsby & Zednik, 2011; Menger, 1999; Lingo & Tepper, 

2013) and activist careers, several individuals held multiple jobs or no job at all.  

The sample gender composition is 11 womxn, 13 men, and 2 nonbinary/gender 

nonconforming people. Racially, the sample includes 7 Black/African/Mixed-Black 

respondents, 11 White respondents, 3 Latinx respondents, and 5 Asian or Southwest Asian 

North African (SWANA) respondents. Of the sample, 3 respondents were unemployed, and 

12 respondents were considering shifting or maneuvering shifts in their careers—these 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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career categories are not mutually exclusive. The sample of respondents collectively 

worked in service to residents in 9 states in the U.S. (as well as the District of Columbia) 

and 4 countries. Causes and movements of the respondents included the labor movement, 

Black liberation, immigrant and refugee rights, reproductive justice, workers’ rights, 

sexual assault survivors, housing justice, racial equity, broad equity, disability rights, the 

environmental movement, and broad human rights.  

Analytic Strategy. I intentionally gathered respondents from a broad range of 

movements, occupations, and locations because prototypical single movement studies 

often focus deeply on one particular organization, occupation, or group, entirely missing 

locations and occupations where activism takes place outside of the organizational 

context—in non-prototypical settings such as for-profit spaces, cultural institutions, small 

businesses, and in microinteractions at the interpersonal, neighborhood, and consumer 

level.  

In-depth semi-structured interviews served as an appropriate methodological tool 

for deep listening and engaging artist activists. Interview participants were asked to 

describe their work and tell stories about how they maneuvered their careers to achieve 

certain missions for their intended audiences. Interview questions prompting stories 

were often phrased “tell me about a time . . .” Interviewees were asked to reflect on their 

responses to positive and negative events in their work as well as organizational 

challenges and changes. The average interview lasted 60 minutes. Some individuals gave 

follow-up interviews if we did not cover all key topics of interest. All interviewees were 

assigned pseudonyms to protect their identities. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, 

and coded. For transcription, I used Otter.ai software. For coding, I used Altas.ti and 

employed flexible coding (Deterding and Waters 2021) by first index coding by interview 

questions, then thematically coding pertinent themes as highlighted as vital factors within 

the arts entrepreneurship literature and the sociological social movements literature. 

Themes relevant to this article included strategies, tactics, personal capacity, risk-taking, 

tolerance for failure, and locations/settings of activism. As part of the larger study, 

interviews were coded for a variety of other themes pertaining to workplace stressors, 

economic strain, burnout, coping strategies, and racial dynamics, which will not be 

analyzed or discussed in the present study.  

Findings: Patterns and Profiles 

In this section, I first give an overview of patterns of entrepreneurial qualities found 

across the sample. I then dive into specific findings on opportunity spotting as background 

for framing interviewees’ responses to their particular contexts. I follow this with profiles 

of five interviewees who provide illustrative cases of the five components of arts 

entrepreneurship action per Chang and Wyszomirski (2015). While all artist activists in 

the sample demonstrate varying degrees of arts entrepreneurial strategies, tactics, 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

13 

competencies/skills, mindset, and (response to) context, the five interviewees profiled 

below provide concise instances for closer examination of these components. In the 

discussion section that follows, I relate these findings back to the broader sample and 

theoretical argument and also address the study’s limitations. 

Overview of Patterns. Artist activists across the overall sample worked in a variety of 

organizational structures and institutions from nonprofits to for-profits to social 

movement organizations to independent small businesses to volunteer groups. 19 of the 

27 interviewees had issues with the social structure/institution their primary work was 

located within. These individuals used various strategies and tactics to manage as well as 

challenge their institutions. 17 of the 27 interviewees took part in the creation of 

mediating structures to practice their activist work in alternative spaces to the 

organizations they sought to change. These mediating structures were means to the end 

of connecting with their audiences. All interviewees mobilized resources in some way to 

achieve social impact. More than one third of the sample sought professional development 

opportunities to achieve social impact, and more than half worked outside of traditional 

institutions to accomplish their change-making work.  

Opportunity Spotting: Responding to Context. The artist activists in this sample worked 

across an amalgam of institutional spaces and responded to the challenges and trials of 

this period by opportunity spotting avenues to do their activist work. Due to Covid-19, 

folks could not gather or create in the same ways, so various individuals in the sample 

joined and led online communities. When death and dread were rampant at the height of 

the pandemic, several artists, like Hunter, responded by making art to heal their 

communities. Facing layoff due to pandemic cuts, Betty creatively constructed a portfolio 

career and leaned into hours and hours of unpaid labor for her social justice causes. Many 

artist activists utilized their networks to crowdsource money and gather supplies for 

mutual aid to provide for their audience’s basic human needs during a time of resource 

scarcity. Many individuals in this sample took this time to reprioritize their principles, and 

many shifted careers during this period. Often their motivations were justice, equity, and 

visions of greater acknowledgement of humanity, as well as their own survival. This 

sample of artist activists faced challenges of workplace culture, censorship, problematic 

funders, mental health concerns, and health precautions induced by the pandemic.   

These artist activists served movements in a variety of ways from helping form the 

collective identity of a social cause group to mobilizing and growing a movement’s 

membership base to advertising the sentiments—social justice frames—of their cause to 

wider audiences to designing actions and implementing tactics to gain their desired 

outcome to mobilizing resources and networks to expand influence. The respondents took 

on a variety of roles in their social movements, each requiring varying entrepreneurial 

skills.  

Profile 1: Betty. Betty is a White woman and a performance artist who started an 

activist group of mostly White individuals with the hopes of educating White artists to use 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

14 

their platforms to raise awareness and support of the Black Lives Matter movement 

shortly following the murder of George Floyd. In the first few months of 2020 and the 

Covid 19 pandemic, Betty was unemployed like many people living in the U.S. but putting 

in “at least probably 60 hours a week” as a volunteer and activist across several issues. 

Betty, new to leading, had spent countless hours observing her “veteran organizer friends” 

for years prior and one day decided to lead her own effort organizing White people of a 

particular artistic practice in her city to dismantle White supremacy in concordance with 

the Black Lives Matter movement. Betty’s goal for this group was to produce 

transformational identity shifts in White activists, encouraging them to unlearn 

internalized White supremacy inherent to our culture. Like many activists of this time, 

Betty spent much of her time online via Zoom in training calls and organizer meetups for 

various social justice causes. Digital organizing via text apps and video chatting software 

played a pivotal role in her work. 

Profile 2: Aaron. Aaron is a White man who works as a union organizer and illustrator. 

He used a variety of tactics via his social networks and social media to develop a collective 

identity within his workplace. Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, 

Aaron sought to organize a social action for his union to take part in as support for Black 

Lives Matter. Aaron’s union sits within a coalition of unions. Within this coalition exist 

factions of workers divided by occupation as well as culture. A more conservative faction 

of the coalition disagreed with taking a racial justice stance like their fellow unionists and 

fought for the union at large to not be formally affiliated with the activity. Even further, 

they argued that Aaron should not be allowed to express his racial justice sentiments and 

support of Black Lives Matter on his personal social media because of his position in the 

union. Aaron recalls the following in our interview: 

And the next day I get a call from the president of this large union. And basically, he chews 

me out for posting something on my personal Facebook page. And he’s like, basically his 

thing was like, ‘well you, you can’t have an opinion because you represent the 

[conglomerate]’, and there was a direct quote of him saying that ‘you know once you work 

for an organization, you don’t have an opinion anymore’.  

Despite censorship and power dynamics in his workplace, Aaron used his social 

network and social media technology to tactically organize the event he and his fellow 

unionists sought to hold. Aaron justified his perseverance as being the change he wished 

to see in his field. For him this also meant being a present husband and father and straying 

away from the workaholism of his occupational field. He states: 

investing time in raising children and spending time with kids is like an investment in this 

larger social vision. 

His union was fighting for better work-life balance as a social vision for their target 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

15 

audience, but many of his fellow unionists did not embody this social vision within their 

own lives. Aaron saw his own embodiment of this social vision as a key part of his activism 

and encouraged his peers to do the same.  

Profile 3: Kofi. Kofi, a first-generation African American man, is a writer, app designer, 

and language justice activist. Kofi sought to save the dying language of his African country 

by creating a translation app for younger generations to utilize. His product is intended to 

halt the loss of culture, as his country’s language is expected to die off within the next 

generation. He joined business pitch programs and contests at his university to acquire 

funders, resources, and business skills for his language app.  

In striving to create a new cultural product, Kofi actively struggles with the White 

supremacy of potential funders. When potential funders discounted the importance of his 

innovative product, Kofi sought out other professional development opportunities to 

equip himself with better language and business skills to drive home the importance of 

his cultural heritage product.   

Profile 4: Fatima. Fatima, a SWANA woman, is a cultural worker with a passion for 

diversity and equity. Most of her work takes place in a museum space. Outside of her paid 

work, she is a writer. Fatima personally educated herself on social movement sentiments, 

strategies, and lessons by thoroughly reading historical and contemporary cultural theory 

of liberation and change-making. Following the murder of George Floyd, she describes her 

work as attempting to humanize policies in her workplace and informing her White 

colleagues of their problematic practices. Fatima went on to describes the self-

management of her career in the following statement: 

I think, like, you kind of learn, like, where you can, you know, find ways to exercise your 

agency which is extremely important. Like, I mean like it shouldn’t be that you have to 

finagle places to do that, but it tends to be the case. You understand the complexity of these 

things. I think it’s really sad that you get disheartened too, like, you’re just like, ‘that’s just 

how all of these places are’. 

Fatima, like others in the sample, self-managed her career to find venues where she 

could authentically pursue her social vision. 

Profile 5: Zackary. Zackary, a Black man, moonlights as a performance artist but also 

works full time as a public servant. Faced with severe racial discrimination and censorship 

at his job, Zackary emotionally managed his anger and fear of punishment for calling out 

White supremacy at his job with his love for Black people and his imaginative hope for a 

better workplace environment for Black people in the future. After making racial 

allegations against his workplace, Zackary was put on unpaid leave. Fortunately, he was 

able to economically survive by crowdsourcing resources, using his networks to control 

media coverage, and leaning into various forms of material, emotional, and technological 

support from the communities who supported his artistic career.  



ARTIVATE 11.3 

16 

Discussion 

Based on 27 in-depth semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of artist activists, 

I found that activists from across the sample overwhelmingly expressed and exhibited 

various characteristics of arts entrepreneurship. Arts entrepreneurship is not necessarily 

tied to economic value. It can also deliver social value by remaking and challenging social 

structures for the purpose of public good. Newer definitions of arts entrepreneurship have 

highlighted disruption and dissent as essential to this field. This research provides an 

intentional focus on artist activists as disruptive arts entrepreneurial change agents. My 

findings provide a range of examples of artist activists strategically employing and 

embodying arts entrepreneurial practices and traits to challenge power structures in a 

particularly traumatic yet creative historical moment. 

During this period, respondents in my sample tapped into various entrepreneurial 

strategies to challenge power structures and status quos and share new ideas and ways of 

being with an intended audience. This finding is expected given that much social 

movement activity is largely centered around the development and implementation of a 

new idea or a new way of life—radically imagining new worlds and ways of being—in 

ways that move people.  

All artist activists in this sample exhibited varying degrees of all five components of 

the arts entrepreneurship taxonomy (Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015). In this discussion 

section, I will focus more extensively on strategies, tactics, competencies/skills, and 

mindset, since I address context in the methods section as the background and 

environment in which the artist activists are operating within. Artist activists from across 

my sample responded to the contexts they found themselves in by spotting opportunities 

for change or innovation and maneuvering various strategies and tactics such as the 

creation of microenterprises, policy change via policy entrepreneurship, use of 

technology, self-management of career transitions, the creation of new cultural products 

in their social movement work, and crowdsourcing resources.   

Strategies. All individuals in this sample employed entrepreneurial strategies in their 

activist work. Individuals like Betty formed social movement organizations, which can be 

understood as a microenterprise for social justice causes. Other individuals in the sample, 

like Kofi, created businesses and new cultural products that relied on cultural heritage. 

Multiple individuals maintain the social justice work by self-managing career transitions 

and self-constructing career portfolios in order to find the time, resources, and space to 

‘finagle’ their work environments to serve their social visions, like that of Fatima, Betty, 

and Zackary. Zackary in particular was able to apply pressure to his full-time workplace 

due to the resources and stability of his moonlit artistic career. Across the sample, 

individuals—like Betty and Aaron—also partook in the strategy of policy implementation 

via policy entrepreneurship through their embodiment of the change they sought and by 

joining and creating likeminded networks of individuals to implement social visions with 

them. They joined participatory democracy organizations following the killing of George 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

17 

Floyd. Their goals we similar: to restructure policy, legal systems, and funding structures 

to be more humane and focused on community health and less carceral, punitive, and 

White supremacist. Thus, they utilized networks and resources of a collective to advocate 

for policy shifts. This is an act of policy entrepreneurship in that these various activists 

had a vision but acknowledged this vision could not be realized by their own actions alone.  

Tactics. Artist activists employed a variety of tactics to work towards their social 

visions. Activists were operating under a global pandemic and were tasked with 

organizing audiences virtually to keep each other healthy and safe. Their use of technology 

was pivotal for their work. As Betty mentioned above, she spent roughly 60 hours a week 

as an activist and volunteer. Much of this time was spent online via Zoom in training calls 

and organizer meetups for various social justice causes. Betty was not alone. During the 

height of the pandemic, several activists in my sample utilized the internet, specifically 

Zoom, to organize and mobilize audiences, trainings, and resources locally, nationally, and 

internationally. Others also used apps like Instagram, GroupMe, Signal, and WhatsApp 

(the latter two for encrypted, private conversations) for digital organizing of their 

intended audience and networks.  

Seeking out and utilizing funders and partnerships was a key tactic artist activists of 

the sample employed. Kofi, like others in the sample, actively sought out potential funders 

for his cultural product. Zackary used his artistic career, social media influence, and 

networks to crowdsource support during a precarious period. He, like others, utilized his 

partnerships for media coverage and other resources. Not mentioned in the profiles was 

mutual aid. Mutual aid was another key tactic activists use to crowdsource resources for 

the audiences’ basic human needs.  

Some individuals shifted their careers, using their workplaces as vehicles for their 

activism. While their paid work might not have been entrepreneurial, their activist work 

that was facilitated through the workplace is an entrepreneurial use of resources. Several 

activists, like Fatima, saw the opportunity to leverage their workplaces as instruments to 

exercise their social justice ideals and economically survive doing so. This leveraging 

should be understood as an entrepreneurial act of creativity and innovation activists 

enacted to curate their jobs (in either social justice or non-social justice spaces) to fit their 

personal activist goals.  

When facing roadblocks in the workplace, artist activists exercise their agency by 

leaving their jobs—self-managing their careers in pursuit of more favorable, open venues. 

This was the case for Zackary and several others in the sample. For individuals in this 

study, this can look like shifting their full-time job entirely or taking on different types of 

gigs in their portfolio career. Artist activists’ self-management of their careers is a strategy 

of creativity, economic survival, and refuge—finding safe spaces to do their work. 

Competencies/Skills & Mindset. As mentioned above in the literature review, activists’ 

competencies/skills and mindset work together to produce outcomes. Activists across the 

sample sought out skill-building opportunities to build their personal capacities for their 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

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activism. This includes risk tolerance, tolerance of failure, and open-mindedness. As 

mentioned previously, opportunity spotting is a common feature of all activist work and 

is ubiquitous to this field. Activists like Betty and Kofi spotted and attended 

formal/informal mentorship and training opportunities to gain skills to better equip 

themselves with skills as well as mindsets for changemaking work. Others took to books 

for social movement education, like Zackary and Fatima, to learn from the past so that 

they can imagine new futures. 

Often, artist activists in my sample experienced varying degrees of censorship and 

repression in their workplaces. To combat repression and persevere at their activist work, 

activists do emotional management work and orient mindsets to overcome barriers and 

continue their path towards their social visions. Coping with failure and balancing risk-

taking as a steady feature of the work can be understood as emotional work. Activists in 

my sample emotionally managed a variety of risks: risk of reputation being associated 

with social causes (Aaron & Rebecca), risk of job loss or censorship (Madeline, Zackary, 

Jane, Paulette), risk of deportation (Rodrigo), as well as risk to freedom and life when 

facing off with the police at demonstrations (Billy & Matisse). Activists actively manage 

their emotions to cope with risk-taking, cope with failure, and persevere in their activism.  

Limitations There are several limitations within this study. First, this study is not 

quantifiably generalizable across social movements, but it is theoretically generalizable in 

that theories and findings of artist activism can be applied across other social movements 

and artistic mediums. Naturally, qualitative research often just provides an in-depth look 

at the lived experiences of respondents to help build deeper understandings of 

understudied phenomena. Another limitation is most of my sample is college educated 

and middle class or comfortably working class. Some participants were unemployed or 

held multiple part-time jobs, but most of the sample was privileged with education and 

full-time employment. Even with this slant towards more privileged respondents, much 

knowledge can still be gained from their stories. It is also worth noting that the activists 

of most social movement scholarship are generally more economically privileged than the 

general population. My sample is consistent with this research but does not shed light on 

the experiences of poor and working-class activists. Future research could focus on more 

economically precarious individuals to gain understanding of how this work may look 

different for them. 

Conclusion 

The present study expands the arts entrepreneurship taxonomy developed by Chang and 

Wyszomirski’s (2015) by drawing throughlines to key concepts in the social movements 

literature. This expansion positions arts entrepreneurship beyond management process 

as a vehicle for institutional change and supports my argument that artist activism is a 

vital form of arts entrepreneurship principled in innovation, creating social value, 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

19 

challenging social structures, and contributing to public good. Artist activists are arts 

entrepreneurs situated within sociopolitical landscapes, seeking institutional change by 

implementing an amalgam of entrepreneurial actions. To learn more about the role of 

disruption or dissent in arts entrepreneurship, arts entrepreneurship scholars could 

utilize artist activists as vital population of study in future research. Artist activists 

possess and implement combinations of entrepreneurial strategies, tactics, skills, and 

mindsets to achieve their social visions and respond to the contexts they are situated 

within. Studying this population could generate insights for the field about the struggles 

of innovation arts entrepreneurs face within the broader socioeconomic and political 

landscape. Social movements are all around us; entrepreneurs are actors within them, 

innovating and sharing new ideas to intended audiences.  

My hope is for these findings to be applied to advocate for pay equity for artists in 

social justice and public-good-oriented spaces and build credible arguments to legitimize 

and destigmatize the work and occupations of artist activists. This would enable artist 

activists to advocate for, create, and organize funding structures to better fund their social 

visions. 

In future research, scholars could conduct more in-depth analyses of the throughlines 

between arts entrepreneurship components and social movement concepts I contribute 

in Table 1 to glean additional insights on these connections and gain deeper 

understandings of artist activists as a type of arts entrepreneur. 

Acknowledgement 

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the editors, Adrienne Callander and Dr. 

Johanna Taylor, the two anonymous reviewers, and my mentor, Dr. Rachel Skaggs, for 

their invaluable guidance and support throughout the writing and revision process.  

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	Introduction
	Background and Motivation
	The Present Study

	Definitions of Arts Entrepreneurship and Artist Activism
	Expanding the Arts Entrepreneurship Taxonomy
	Research Methods
	Findings: Patterns and Profiles
	Discussion
	Conclusion
	Acknowledgement

